TidBit Tuesday - Spooktacular Treats

One thing that I do know is food. As I try to find fun ways to celebrate holidays or special occasions food is without a doubt a center piece to our celebrating. We all LOVE food, so here are some fun and SIMPLE Halloween foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Enjoy!

Rise and Shine Spider

1 slice of French Toast, buttered and covered in syrup

2 chocolate chips, for eyes

3-4 pieces of bacon, cut in half for legs

Potato Skin Ghosts
Medium Baked potatoes (1 will make 4 servings) baked through
Shredded cheddar cheese
Green onions, sliced
Bacon bits
Sour Cream
Butter, salt and pepper

Take a cooked baked potato, cut into quarters making a shell. Line on a cookie sheet skin down. Butter, salt and pepper potato, cover with shredded cheese and put into a hot oven to melt cheese. After cheese is melted allow to cool for 5 minutes. Cover completely with sour cream and use green onion and bacon bits for mouth and eyes!


Mummy Dogs
Hot Dogs
Refrigerator breadsticks
Ketchup or Mustard

Take breadsticks and slice into thin strips. Wrap the strips around the hotdog, leaving a space at the top for "face". Place on a cookie sheet and cook in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes until dough is cooked through. Use ketchup or mustard to make two eyes and serve!

Gooey Guts with Eyeballs
Spaghetti and Marinara or Red Meat Sauce
Whole Black Olives
Cook and plate, with 2 black olives staring at you

Baked Bones
Breadstick dough (either refrigerator or homemade)
Tie a knot at one end to create a bone look, sprinkle with garlic salt or parmesan cheese and coat with melted butter. Cook according to directions.

Witches Fingers
Asparagus
Olive oil, salt, and pepper

Preheat oven at 425 degrees, cut bottoms of asparagus off. On a cookie sheet coat asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper and toss evenly. Bake in oven for 20 minutes until tender.

Spider Web Brownies
1 pkg. brownies, baked in a round pan
When cooled, frost with white frosting
Use a black gel frosting to make a spiral starting in the center of the brownies. Then using a toothpick or knife blade draw it through the black spiral from center to edge to create the web.
Add fake or real spiders for decoration

Saturday Soup - on Sunday

So I've become a pretty bad blogger! Part of me thinks this is good. I'm not on the computer as much, hopefully that means my time is being spent in better ways right?? The other part is sad that at least for my boys' sake I'm not being very diligent about journaling the happenings of our life the past few months! Here's what's new:

FaLl - I'm totally falling for fall! The weather has been great, the colors are beautiful, and the leaves are super Crunchy! We played in the leaves this week and built a huge pile to jump in. Both boys loved them! I used to love to build a leaf house when I was little and was wishing I had a rake so we could get to work. (Don't you love Sam's outfit here? He has a total mind of his own when it comes to putting things together - he got the crown from Primary, and insisted on wearing his cowboy boots!)

Utah County: We've been hitting the ol' stomping grounds the past two weeks. First we went to the Bean Museum for Shawn's Columbus Day holiday and the boys loved it! They had great picture scavenger hunt that Sam loved completing and Jack liked tearing apart the accenting plants and foliage. Then we went to the BYU v. TCU game last night, which wasn't as big of a success as we were hoping for! The boys had fun being with cousins and watching the games amist the other Cougar Fans!

Doesn't that lion looks like its about ready to attack Sam and that he's running for his life? Lavell Edwards Stadium

Go Cougars

BYU Blue - Luke, Sam, Tanner

Jack and Leah

FuN: The rest of our weeks are made up of playing with toys, going to the park, starting swimming lessons (Yea!), and doing the routine things around the house. We're SUPER excited for Halloween and are heading up to Idaho for trick or treating. We hope you are all having a super week too!

Sam's a really good shot with his bow and arrow;)

(Are they actually becoming buddies? Maybe....)

King of the Chair! Jack LOVES this chair and if anything or anyone (Sam) is caught sitting in it, he will throw you out! He thinks he's pretty hot stuff! He has also learned how to give kiss, super slobbery, shake his head no, and direct us to what he wants by sticking his arm in the general direction. Jack also has a HUGE sweet tooth, eats everything in one bite, and has learned to throw a tantrum with fake cry and all!

The return of .... TidBit Tuesday (I think)

I had this great Halloween Family Home Evening packet for Halloween and wanted to share it with you all. I can't include the little game that went with it, but the lesson and treat are fun and a great way to tie the gospel into Pumpkin Carving. So here it is! Enjoy....

Scripture: Matthew 5:16

Start this object lesson with a dirty pumpkin sitting on the table, or if you have more time you could pick your own pumpkin. Talk about the following points as you clean and carve the pumpkin.

- Heavenly Father picked you out of a patch.
- Brings you in and washed al the dirt off of you.
- Then he cuts off the top and scoops out all the yucky stuff
- He removes the seeds of doubt, hate adn greed.
- He then carves a new smiling face
- He puts his light inside of you to shine for all the world to see.

Oreo Spider Cookies
1 pkg. Oreo Cookies
1 pkg Black or Red LIcorice Strings
1 pkg mini M&M's
1 can frosting, any flavor

(You can also use preztels and pb instead of licorice and frosting for a more "healthy" spider)

Carefully take apart Oreo cookie to reveal frosting. Use a knife to spread additional frosting on one half of oreo. Use 4 stings of licorice adding them to the frosting for legs. Put top of Oreo back on. Use frosting to secure M&M's as eyes. Serve with a glass of milk.

Happy Halloween to all. This is one of our favorite holidays and Sam has been preparing for over two weeks. He's become quite a good little aim with his bow and arrow!

Salt Lake City

Our first week of living in Salt Lake City has come and gone, and we're really enjoying it. We got here last Saturday and have spent this first week unpacking, exploring and hanging out. We are living in a little apartment on the border of Murray and Salt Lake City - the boys are liking our new "home", it is very primitive because we only wanted to bring the bare minimim. We are using our empty boxes as end tables, night stands, and drawers! It amazed me at how much stuff we have that we really don't need. Our first night here we "christened" the house with a little Singstar action, Jack even joined in!

We hit the park, the Hogle Zoo, frosted sugar cookies with our Blake cousins, and visited Temple Square this week. The boys really loved the being outside because we're not used to not having a yard to play in. Jack is having the hardest time adjusting and his napping has been crazy! Yikes! Hopefully this is just a stage. Sam on the other hand was happy to be reunited with all of his toys from Iowa and put me to work on his Halloween costume the minute we got here. Isn't Robin Hood the cutest guy in Sherwood forest?

Yesterday we decided to try Ruth's Diner in Emigration Canyon and it was AWESOME! Not only was the drive great as we saw the beautiful fall colors in the mountains, but the food was the epitomy of comfort food. We then headed down to Temple Square, which was really great to see, and the boys again loved being outside and seeing all of the buildings. The older I get the more I'm in awe at the beauty of the Salt Lake Temple. Really is it amazing that my pioneer ancestors built such an amazing structure and sacrificed so much to see it built. We also visited the Beehive House (home of Brigham Young), which I'm happy to report have updated the candy treat you recieve at the end. The lemon drops are much better than the homemade molasses candy thing they used to give! I love this picture of the boys - it almost brought tears to my eyes.

Shawn is SUPER busy at the VA and really learning a lot. They have given him a lot of liberty here and pretty much let the students do whatever they feel comfortable doing. Kind of scary, but its been a great learning opportunity already, and I think he likes being busy, maybe not missing lunch basically everyday because of it! But the greatest part about being here is being together as a family again, and living like a family in our own home. I already can tell a difference in both boys - though we miss seeing our family in Idaho as much - it is nice to have some kind of normal life back!

The one great perk of the VA is Shawn gets all holidays off - so that's right Happy Columbus Day tomorrow, we'll be off playing with our Dad!!

All is Well!

Jack's surgery went great yesterday. We arrived at the hospital at 6:00 a.m. and the surgery got underway at 7:30. The doctor told us that everything went really well, and along with the orchiopexy they also repaired a hernia that he had! So that was nice to kill two birds with one stone. The surgery only took about 1 hour, and waiting was the worst part of the entire process. He really was at a great age to get this done because there was no fear, and we never had to see him "go out" - I am really grateful to the staff, they were very kind to us that morning. I only broke down when they took him away from me, but he was happy to be wrapped in a warm blanky and exploring the rest of the hospital.

Jack Pre-Surgery

Jack Post - Surgery

(as you can see he's acting pretty much the same)

Jack was incredibly good during the entire morning, and the nurses and staff kept commenting on how happy he was even after surgery. We stayed in post-op for a little longer than anticipated waiting for Jack to urinate! Geez, I guess the drugs were still lingering because after 2 sippies of juice and an IV drip he hadn't gone. They finally released us around noon, and he has acted like nothing happened the whole time. I was sure he'd be a little more timid to walk, crawl down stairs, etc. and expected for him to be feeling some pain, but he must have a super human pain tolerance because he hasn't slown down! Thanks for all of your nice comments and prayers - we greatly appreciated them.

In other news - Shawn got home to stay!! We are so happy to have him back, and happier still to have a little week of break to enjoy him before he starts his core rotation in SLC. We will move down Saturday, and I'm pretty excited to live in SLC for a few months. It will so much fun to take advantage of the fun activities there. Sam has also decided he wants to be a drummer and he and his cousins have formed a band. Any band name suggestions?